In any case, as we welcome the new year, let's see what we can look forward to and what predictions are at hand.
Daily game providers will increase but also consolidate
This year has seen several daily fantasy sites establishing themselves in the market. DraftKings closed out series B funding for $24 million in November. This bookends the other daily fantasy funding in January when FanDuel cleared $11 million in series C. There will continue to be growth in this segment of fantasy sports that will spawn new sites and entries in this field. The traditional league games will continue to grow but not at the rate that daily games do. Daily games appeal to players looking to win prizes versus the players that are playing in the traditional leagues for bragging rights. On the flip side, with increased growth will come increased competition, and we would expect to see some daily game providers to struggle with the ability to entice players to their offering. This will eventually lead to some daily fantasy sites to close shop or get consolidated.
Peyton Manning will be the #1 draft choice
This previous year saw the resurgence of Peyton Manning and his record setting performance. Adrian Peterson was this year #1 draft choice in fantasy land, however we would predict that Peyton Manning shall be the #1 draft choice of 2014. If this does occur that would be an impressive showing for a quarterback when all the experts and pundits that may want to advise to pick up a running back as the first rounders. For me, if he is available, I would be inclined to pick the quarterback for my first pick.
Fantasy Sports will continue to skirt gambling question
There is a continued question if fantasy sports is considered gambling. In some states, there appears to be positions on the matter such as in Arizona. Although the matter maybe settled at the federal level, it is at the state level that has not completely been answered. It is the daily fantasy games that are particularly targeted for the question of gambling because of the nature of the prize money as well as unpredictability of the daily game that best resemblance gambling. Because of this, Yahoo, ESPN and NFL have not offered these types of games. CBS has partly dipped their foot in the pool by offering weekly games for prizes. Even if the legal matters of gambling are settled in the remaining state Yahoo, ESPN and NFL should remain cautious of the issue. The main source of revenue maybe through advertising and prize leagues do offer another source of revenue, however offering prize leagues would go against their brand and expertise.
Football players and fantasy owners will have continue love-hate relationship
I'll admit that it has been trying this year with Calvin Johnson on my team. On some weeks he would obliterate the competition, on other weeks he goes down with a knee injury, really? I am sure that the football players are equally annoyed at the fantasy owners. When fantasy owners threaten death and behave like this toward Brandon Jacobs, it is easy to wonder why. Torrey Smith is sick of fantasy owners. But we may have an alley in Justin Tucker (ex-Longhorn player, I might add) who picks himself in his fantasy leagues and then dominates.
Mobile fantasy apps will continue to get better
I fear not, now that I have to go to run errand or go to a holiday party when my teams are playing. Fantasy apps on the mobile devices have increasingly become faster and more accurate to keep up with my team in real-time. Considering that other than the draft, the mobile phone is perfect for the score check-in as well as managing rosters, game providers will continue to make apps easier as well as offer feature parity with their web counter parts. I look forward to being able to smack talk in real time while my team is doubling up on my competition this week. To go with that, they should probably add a smack talk ignore feature when my team is getting obliterated and getting double up this week.
Big data is the next weapon in the fantasy sports battle
There was an episode from Star Trek: The Next Generation called "Booby Trap" where Captain Picard was faced with the dilemma where he had to turn over the Enterprise to the computer because it was better than humans at calculations. Well that day is here in fantasy football land. Imagine what playing fantasy sorts would be without the automatic data. The reason why fantasy sports had the explosive growth in the 90s and 00s was because of the internet and the content management systems that made calculations automatic. The next battle will be what is know as Big Data. Imagine a world when the system picks for you who to play. The system already give you predictions of score already. With the money to be made on daily fantasy sports game, this kind of technology would be invaluable. Although having the system pick the players takes the fun out of the game, for some players there motivation is financial. It's kind of like playing your friend chess via email and creams you 5 times straight and it turns out he has been using a computer program the whole time.
Thank you, thank you for reading and I wish you the best holiday season,
Rick Duong
